Gun violence has begun to seem increasingly common in Harrisonburg and surrounding communities with the recent shooting at a party at the Redpoint apartment complex in Rockingham County. To minimize
Authorities, if, in fact, he is outside of that hospital, it s a question mark as to what direction he could have gone. new reporting from msnbc s katy tur having spoken to the public information officer for the police department here that the alleged shooter was with his mother, was there at north side hospital for a medical appointment. not confirming yet that it was a mental health appointment but police do know his identity. there s a white house press briefing right now underway. press secretary karine jean-pierre is talking about the shooting. let s listen in. i want to tell the public, we urge them to heed guidance from officials and please keep yourselves safe as the situation continues. just want to be very clear about this, and don t want to speak to this directly because we just don t know exactly what is i know there s a shooting, but we don t have all of the information. it s very fluid. so, look, is the president
But until we figure out whether this threat is real and for how long. you know, some states are not budging on this. be prepared for the real possibility that this gun was lawfully purchased. we don t know. there would be no constraint as you re referring to in georgia and most states. the simple act of seeking mental health care is certainly not enough to block someone from purchasing a weapon, nor do we want it to be. we want people to access mental health care of course, but we also want to try and create a threshold whereby if you re adjudicated or involuntarily institutionalized or certain, let s set a bar somewhere. this happened big time after the virginia tech shooting. you ll recall. so that information then gets entered into what s called the nix background system run by the fbi and a flag goes up when you try to purchase a weapon after that. we don t know if that person
Major operational medical hub, and also residential, you know, i was at one point staying in an apartment facility about 30 stories tall, right next door, multiple around there. there are several different hotels within three floor blocks there as well. including parking garages, this is a high concentration populated area, and of course again, this is a medical facility if you re in the heart of the day, you could expect to have been quite busy, 20 different tenets inside of here, ranging from all different types of care. the question is what part of the facility. and as frank figliuzzi has outlined, to what extent was this a targeted attack. i want to go ahead and bring in nbc s catie beck in atlanta down the street from where the shooting happened. we talked with producer charlie guile who i m sure you re with or spread out together. he said you were pushed back a couple of blocks. what can you tell us about what you re seeing, hearing and what we know so far? reporter: we just
i want to go ahead and bring in msnbc anchor katy tur into our coverage. she has been talking to officials and following this breaking news for us. just to update everyone watching with everything we know at this moment, one person is dead, at least four others are injured after, again, a shooting at an atlanta medical center this afternoon. i was speaking with a spokesperson for the atlanta police department just a moment ago and they tell me that the suspect, 24-year-old dion patterson born in october 1998 was at that medical center for an appointment along with his mother. it was an appointment for him. there are reports out there that he was there for a mental health check of some kind. the atlanta police department is not ready to confirm that right now. there were also reports that the mother was among those shot. the atlanta police department says she was not shot. again, they know who the suspect